I'm currently reading The Lampshade by Marc Jacobson (which seems quite pop and not entirely thoroughly researched, but entertaining all the same), and I've got up to the part where he interviews a Holocaust denier. There's a question that's been rattling around in my head about Holocaust deniers for some time, so I thought I'd see what Dopers had to say about it.

Now, from what I understand Holocaust deniers don't tend to deny the whole thing: they say that the numbers were much less than the mainstream historical record, they say gas chambers were never used, that kind of thing. But they don't deny work camps, starving, beatings, or the Nazi rhetoric and wishes - at least, not that I've seen. So here's my question...why does it matter?

IANAHD, I believe these things happened as history tells us. But to be perfectly, bluntly honest (and I feel like this may be an unpopular opinion), I really don't care if it was six million Jews (Roma, Poles, LGBT, mentally ill...) killed, or only two million. Those kinds of numbers, to be quite frank, are much too large for me to get my head around. I don't care if the method of execution the Nazis used was gas chambers, or if they killed people using the butt of a rifle. The details of it all seem to me to be entirely beside the point.

Surely the really important facts here are very, very simple - and surely we all agree on them? The Nazis decided that large numbers of people and classes of people were not human, so they killed them in extremely nasty ways. It was shocking and terrible and something we should remember and learn from, so history doesn't repeat itself (while we're at it, we might remember just who it was who invented concentration camps, and that these things can happen right here at home - but that's off the topic).

So why does anyone feel that the "fact" the numbers of people killed in the Holocaust are lower than the historical record tells us important enough to devote so much time and effort to?

Surely the really important facts here are very, very simple - and surely we all agree on them? The Nazis decided that large numbers of people and classes of people were not human, so they killed them in extremely nasty ways. It was shocking and terrible and something we should remember and learn from, so history doesn't repeat itself (while we're at it, we might remember just who it was who invented concentration camps, and that these things can happen right here at home - but that's off the topic).

So why does anyone feel that the "fact" the numbers of people killed in the Holocaust are lower than the historical record tells us important enough to devote so much time and effort to?

You do realize that Holocaust deniers are mostly people who hate Jews, right? There are probably a few who are just nutty conspiracy theory types, but most of them think the Nazis had the right idea. I'm not any kind of expert on this sort of thing, but as best as I can tell Holocaust deniers generally feel it's important to deny that the Holocaust was as bad as it was for several reasons:

1) They want to make the Nazis seem more sympathetic. Some probably believe the Nazis really weren't as bad as history tells us, others are probably deliberately lying because they know Nazis are unpopular with the general public.

2) They want the Jews to seem less sympathetic. Many Holocaust deniers are quite open about claiming that there's an international Jewish conspiracy responsible for inventing all kinds of lies about the Holocaust just so the rest of the world would feel sorry for them.

3) Some of them apparently think so highly of Hitler that they can't believe that, if he'd really set out to exterminate the Jews, he could have failed to do so.

You do realize that Holocaust deniers are mostly people who hate Jews, right?

You're probably right - I'm just thrown off because the guy in this book is portrayed by the (Jewish) author as being really friendly, open, and self-described as looking for a "Jewish-friendly" resolution.

There are no "Jewish-friendly" resolutions to the existence of systematic Holocaust denial.

It is an expression of virulent anti-Semitism, designed to 1) make modern-day hatred more acceptable by obscuring its consequences, 2) promote suspicions that Jews are "taking advantage" of the Holocaust and thus engender resentment, and 3) inflict pain on victims and their descendants through the pretense that the Holocaust's horrors never existed or were grossly exaggerated.

Similar motives are behind the pretense that slavery was a relatively benign institution. It's bigotry, pure and simple.

There are no "Jewish-friendly" resolutions to the existence of systematic Holocaust denial.

Yeah, I know, but the guy in the book didn't seem to. He came across as cheerful and naive. He may be an exception, badly portrayed, or engaging in a remarkable amount of doublethink, however.

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It is an expression of virulent anti-Semitism, designed to 1) make modern-day hatred more acceptable by obscuring its consequences, 2) promote suspicions that Jews are "taking advantage" of the Holocaust and thus engender resentment, and 3) inflict pain on victims and their descendants through the pretense that the Holocaust's horrors never existed or were grossly exaggerated.

Now I definitely see how they're doing #3, but it's 1 and 2 here that get me - is this willful blindness then? They really believe that 6 million people being murdered gets a well-deserved shocked and sombered reaction, but if it's only two million - well, that's Jews taking advantage? (Two million is the number I've heard given).

I don't know what it says about me, but my emotional reaction to the Holocaust wouldn't really change if I did believe the Holocaust deniers' claims. I can only begin to understand what happened by looking at individual cases, and it seems to me that no matter what the numbers, the consequences are dramatic enough that were we to accept the Holocaust deniers' version hook line and sinker - well fuck, that really wouldn't make a difference. I mean, look at the pictures of people who were kept in concentration camps! Look at the mass graves!

I suppose the answer to all of this is: "bigotry blinds people", isn't it?

Ironically, or not, the Holocaust is one of the best documented 'events' in recent history.

Besides the millions of eye-witnesses, there are multiple levels of confirmation ranging from preserved infrastructure, a giant spectrum of photographic and documentary evidence (the latter including huge amounts of document evidence), and large numbers of accounts/confessions by the perpetrators (and recall that Eichmann didn't deny the charges against him, only that he was following orders). Still, . . .

. . . I've always felt that the most convincing evidence are the countless extended families which wound up being represented by one or two survivors after the war. The Holocaust deniers would have us believe somehow that all those hundreds of thousands of geographically and linguistically disparate families, from France and Holland in the west, to Poland in the east, and from Latvia in the north to Ukraine and Romania in the south, all, immediately and simultaneously upon the end of the war, got their stories straight.

I know very little about Holocaust Denial in general, but it seems like I read (right here on the SDMB) about a very famous, prominent Denier who is Jewish, but still claims that the whole thing was blown way out of proportion, and that while the Nazi ideology was clearly Bad News For The Jews, they never did the vile things (mass exterminations, primarily) that people think they did.

I know very little about Holocaust Denial in general, but it seems like I read (right here on the SDMB) about a very famous, prominent Denier who is Jewish, but still claims that the whole thing was blown way out of proportion, and that while the Nazi ideology was clearly Bad News For The Jews, they never did the vile things (mass exterminations, primarily) that people think they did.

Sound like David Cole (whose fame has dropped significantly since he recanted), but I doubt he's the only one who fits the description.

Cole is more of a troll than a denier, I figure - he likes to stir things up for the sake of it.

One very ugly recent development, based on images and Facebook notes sent to me by a very conservative relative, is to deny that extreme conservatives had anything to do with the holocaust by blaming it on the liberals, the "logic" is that since the Nazis were liberals (Several books and articles from conservatives have used this stupid logic) it follows then that extreme conservatives or neo-nazi groups are the "good guys" today

It is horrible, but to me it is interesting to see the twists they have to do to ignore that people like Einstein (yes he had Jewish parents but but they and he were secular/agnostic) and many other European liberals ended up running away from the Nazis or ended up in the concentration camps.

What is even more twisted is that I do notice that several of the sources of that meme are also Neo-nazis. At the same time that they minimize the Holocaust to defend themselves from their sorry heritage, they do launch into what I would describe as the ultimate act of projection: They claim that the Jews/liberals/the left are planning to do a "white genocide" so anything is justified in the efforts to stop them.

Indeed, idiotic bigot logic that works mostly with the Nazis of today but sadly, as my relative shows, there is a lot of denial information on this subject running around under the radar of the mainstream media that is fooling a good number of Americans right now, not only with denials of the holocaust, but also with denials of the real agenda that the past and modern followers of fascism are trying to hide.

Nazism was not an "extreme conservative" ideology. It was revolutionary. Extreme conservatism was more like Austrofascism or Franco's rule.

Part of the issue with holocaust denial is that by making it illegal you give it a certain validity. Not the historical fact itself, but the looking into it. If the state is in the business of making opinions illegal, then it is a free man's obligation to look into those opinions.

Nazism was not an "extreme conservative" ideology. It was revolutionary. Extreme conservatism was more like Austrofascism or Franco's rule.

Part of the issue with holocaust denial is that by making it illegal you give it a certain validity. Not the historical fact itself, but the looking into it. If the state is in the business of making opinions illegal, then it is a free man's obligation to look into those opinions.

It is not illegal in the USA, and yet it continues and refuses to go away.

... - is this willful blindness then? They really believe that 6 million people being murdered gets a well-deserved shocked and sombered reaction, but if it's only two million - well, that's Jews taking advantage? (Two million is the number I've heard given)....

"Willful blindness" gives more credit to a lot of these folks than they deserve. It's just flat outright lying.

Two million is "better" because it's a bit more palatable -- it sounds like the speaker isn't completely insane and in total denial. But in fact they are in total denial, which becomes clear when they deny there was a deliberate extermination program, and attribute most of the deaths simply to overcrowded, underfed prisoners dying of disease, slow starvation (in a country being bombed every day when most of the entire population was starting to go hungry), and the occasional brutal (but never officially sanctioned) camp guard.

And by this narrative they make it fuzzier. Seriously, I know a fair amount about the Holocaust, and I don't really know how many were killed by execution in comparison to the numbers killed by hunger and disease. And I don't particularly because I understand that death by hunger and disease was part of the plan. But a lot of people don't get that -- they see those deaths as, oh, I dunno... incidental? accidental?

So there are the liars, and there are some who believe the lies and spread them. They're the"willfully blind", as they could certainly find out the facts if they do the research.

Here's one theory. HD's want attention. To go with the flow and say all research and history shows it happened makes them invisible among the multitudes, but to refute the mainstream allows them to stand out. Look at me: I'm loud, I'm proud, and I'm not part of the crowd!

It excuses Hitler and the Nazis. If you bring the amount killed down to under a million, you're approaching the levels of deaths other countries caused. The argument is "Sure, the Germans may have killed 500,000 people. But the French killed 500,000 in Algeria and the British killed 500,000 in India and the Americans killed 500,000 in Vietnam."

I never understand why neo-nazis bother to deny the holocaust (in public). If you hate the Jews so much surely you'd be happy so many were wiped out by your ideological predecessors. Holocaust denial is just barmy any way you look at it.

You do realize that Holocaust deniers are mostly people who hate Jews, right? There are probably a few who are just nutty conspiracy theory types,

Every single conspiracy theorist I've encountered--not most of them, not just more than half, but every single one--is an anti-Semite. Whenever I've queried said CTs on their particular flavor of the moment "theory," every time it ends up with one of the obviously anti-Semitic "theories" being touted as proof of the flavor of the moment.

Every single conspiracy theorist I've encountered--not most of them, not just more than half, but every single one--is an anti-Semite. Whenever I've queried said CTs on their particular flavor of the moment "theory," every time it ends up with one of the obviously anti-Semitic "theories" being touted as proof of the flavor of the moment.

What, even the grassy knoll guys? The moon hoaxers? Anti-vax?

For what it's worth, I'm friends with a CT nut - mostly 9/11 stuff, and more general anti-government kookiness. His (considerably more level-headed) wife is Jewish, as, by extension, is their daughter. Never caught a whiff of any sort of bigotry off him.

Yep. The grassy knoll guys especially. Their laughable theory was "The Jews running the world had to get rid of Kennedy" for a variety of reasons. The moon hoaxers were even more direct: "The moon landing was faked, you can tell it was all done in a film studio, and you know the Jews run Hollywood." From there, the conversation usually went further downhill.

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For what it's worth, I'm friends with a CT nut - mostly 9/11 stuff, and more general anti-government kookiness. His (considerably more level-headed) wife is Jewish, as, by extension, is their daughter. Never caught a whiff of any sort of bigotry off him.

My guess is that's just another manifestation of the belief in contradictory things required for CTers. I recently read a good article on this phenomenon. I'll try to dig it up and post a link to the article.

My guess is that's just another manifestation of the belief in contradictory things required for CTers. I recently read a good article on this phenomenon. I'll try to dig it up and post a link to the article.

I'm impressed how you have a better idea than I do how a friend I've known for more than ten years (and you've never met) really thinks.

Did I say know? No, I did not. I said guess. Maybe I can make it clearer here: Your friend, as you say, is a CT nut. In my experience, as I said, every CT I've encountered is, at its root, anti-Semitic.

I did not say that your friend is an anti-Semite. I said that my guess is that your friend (a) believes in certain CTs and (b) your friend does not believe said CTs to be anti-Semitic.

Does that clear it up?

And, as promised, here is the Scientific American article (Special Issue, September 2012, p. 91).

I suggest you familiarize yourself with the term guess. Maybe I'll make it clearer here: Your friend, as you say, is a CT nut. In my experience, as I said, every CT I've encountered is, at its root, anti-Semitic.

So, you're saying that if Bob says, "Kennedy wasn't killed by Oswald, he was killed by the Jews!" and Andy says, "Kennedy wasn't killed by Oswald, he was killed by the Mafia!" both of them believe in an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, because one theory (out of, literally, hundreds) about what "really" happened to Kennedy involves the Jews? Even though nothing about what Andy says is in anyway related to Jews?

Actually, I've never heard it in person that the Mafia killed Kennedy; at least, I don't recall hearing that. For those persons I've encountered who've advanced a fair number of the other CTs, when I've queried them, as I mentioned above, it's always gotten back to one of the anti-Semitic CTs. I find it sad and, obviously, it tarnishes my view of any CT.

But what I'm saying is that I'd like to meet your friend. Really, it would be great to break the string of bad eggs I've encountered who are CTers. I really would like to meet one in person who is not an anti-Semite. Unfortunately, all of my in-person accounts have been with the opposite kind of person. I'd look forward to a meeting with a good egg CTer. I guess I should emphasize that I'm not being sarcastic; I really would like to meet the dude.

By the way, did you read the Scientific American article and, if so, what do you think of it?

So, you're saying that if Bob says, "Kennedy wasn't killed by Oswald, he was killed by the Jews!" and Andy says, "Kennedy wasn't killed by Oswald, he was killed by the Mafia!" both of them believe in an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, because one theory (out of, literally, hundreds) about what "really" happened to Kennedy involves the Jews? Even though nothing about what Andy says is in anyway related to Jews?

While I have no doubt that CTers are disproportionately anti-Semitic, I don't remember in the movie JFK, Jim Garrison ranting about "the Jews".

For that matter, I don't remember any of the characters in the movie, except Ruby, being Jewish and I don't think Ruby's ethnicity was even mentioned in the movie.

Uh, after reading the book "Case Closed" by Posner and other debunkings it is clear that any narrative coming from Jim Garrison and movies derived from his exploits are better to be described as just fiction.

Uh, after reading the book "Case Closed" by Posner and other debunkings it is clear that any narrative coming from Jim Garrison and movies derived from his exploits are better to be described as just fiction.

Actually, I've never heard it in person that the Mafia killed Kennedy; at least, I don't recall hearing that. For those persons I've encountered who've advanced a fair number of the other CTs, when I've queried them, as I mentioned above, it's always gotten back to one of the anti-Semitic CTs. I find it sad and, obviously, it tarnishes my view of any CT.

Yeah, most of the Kennedy CTers I know favor the CIA as their bogeyman here. None of them have ever invoked the Jews as the source of the conspiracy. A lot of my friends are on the liberal political fringe, and have some pretty goofy ideas. None of them are racists, though. Well, one of them moved out to the middle of nowhere, Arizona, married into a redneck family, and has started blaming Mexicans for a lot of things. I don't see him too much anymore.

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But what I'm saying is that I'd like to meet your friend. Really, it would be great to break the string of bad eggs I've encountered who are CTers. I really would like to meet one in person who is not an anti-Semite. Unfortunately, all of my in-person accounts have been with the opposite kind of person. I'd look forward to a meeting with a good egg CTer. I guess I should emphasize that I'm not being sarcastic; I really would like to meet the dude.

I'm not really in a position to introduce you, but I suppose could, if you're interested, forward you the extensive email conversations I've had with this guy about 9/11. They cover about six months or so, and what I figure has to be at least a couple hundred exchanges. He never mentions anything about Jews, and I followed him down a lot of rabbit holes in the course of that conversation.

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By the way, did you read the Scientific American article and, if so, what do you think of it?

I skimmed it, but I'm not really arguing against the concept of cognitive dissonance (which my friend has in spades). I'm just saying, there's a lot of different kinds of crazy in the CT world. Not all of it is crazy racism. A lot of it is crazy anti-authoritarianism, with no racist tinge at all.

To address your point about why it matters how many or in what fashion they were executed. I believe it does matter. In fact the method is the most horrific aspect of the Holocaust. Human history is littered with mass exterminations but what sets the Holocaust apart is the calculated integration of human savagery with 20th Century technology. It raised (or lowered I suppose) the bar. Here is a technologically advanced society using the advancements that are supposed to raise us up above our animal instincts to systematically slaughter other humans in a cold, calculated method.

Icy, systematic, calculated murder on a mass scale. Sends shivers down the spine.

Now I definitely see how they're doing #3, but it's 1 and 2 here that get me - is this willful blindness then? They really believe that 6 million people being murdered gets a well-deserved shocked and sombered reaction, but if it's only two million - well, that's Jews taking advantage? (Two million is the number I've heard given).

"World War II happened, and we can all agree it was just terrible, and all sorts of bad stuff happened. Now the thing to understand is, the Jews were enemies of the Nazis from the beginning. They weren't really loyal to Germany. So when the war started, the Germans took them into custody because they couldn't trust them. That's not unusual. Americans did that in World War II too with the Japanese; the British in the Boer War, and so on. It was a strictly defensive measure."

"Now, some Jews died in the camps of disease or malnutrition. That's because there was a war on. Allied bombing had so disrupted German supply and done such horrible stuff to German civilians that there were shortages of food and medicine. (So really, if anybody's responsible for the Jews who died, it was the Allies, with their barbaric bombing of innocent German civilians). And those deaths were, at most, a few hundred thousand.

As for the rest of it, the gas chambers, and mass graves, and all that, that stuff didn't happen. It's a deliberate fraud that was put out by both the Soviets and the Jews, the Soviets because they wanted to discredit fascism and racial pride, and the Jews because they wanted, first, to discredit and embarrass the German people, and second, to play on international sympathy to get a Jewish state of their own. "

And that's basically the argument. That it didn't happen, and to the extent that it did, it was accidental, and you know, shit happens.

That crazy old guy who shot up the Holocaust Museum a few years ago maintained a blog where he denied the Holocaust, though with a twist. In his own words, he said: "I don't believe the Holocaust ever happened...but it SHOULD have happened!"

I know a nice chap, American, of German family origin, who denies the holocaust, because of a naive belief that Germans wouldn't have done such a thing. The Germans are nice, friendly, happy, musical people. He's vacationed there often; he speaks German fluently. He loves the German people, and simply cannot believe that they could get involved in something that evil. History has to be mistaken.

I suppose it's a slightly nicer reason than we usually see, but it is remarkably simplistic.

In my experience, as I said, every CT I've encountered is, at its root, anti-Semitic.

I would rephrase this as every CT has a certain number of anti-Semitic adherents, and the more CTs a person espouses, the more likely it is that he/she is an anti-Semitic bigot.

When you get someone who believes conspiracy theories about 9/11, the Kennedy assassination, water fluoridation, the use of vaccines to depopulate the world etc., it is highly probable that person has connected the dots in his excuse for a brain to blame da Jews.

(...)from what I understand Holocaust deniers don't tend to deny the whole thing: they say that the numbers were much less (...) why does anyone feel that the "fact" the numbers of people killed in the Holocaust are lower than the historical record tells us important enough to devote so much time and effort to?

For most "deniers" it's antisemitism and refuting the Jewish controlled media et cetera. But beyond that I value truth and historical accuracy for their own sake, so if the Nazis only exterminated a mere 3 million, I hope that info would eventually supplant the current figures. Likewise, if the number was really 12 million.

Did I say know? No, I did not. I said guess. Maybe I can make it clearer here: Your friend, as you say, is a CT nut. In my experience, as I said, every CT I've encountered is, at its root, anti-Semitic.

I did not say that your friend is an anti-Semite. I said that my guess is that your friend (a) believes in certain CTs and (b) your friend does not believe said CTs to be anti-Semitic.

Does that clear it up?

Not until we find out whether or not he takes sugar in his porridge.

__________________
The Internet: Nobody knows if you're a dog. Everybody knows if you're a jackass.

That crazy old guy who shot up the Holocaust Museum a few years ago maintained a blog where he denied the Holocaust, though with a twist. In his own words, he said: "I don't believe the Holocaust ever happened...but it SHOULD have happened!"

That kind of logic make head asplode.

Holocost deniers remind me of "Cell Block Tango '(He had it comin') from the musical 'Chicago'. In it all the inmates complain that they didn't murder their husbands, boyfriends, etc. but they deserved to be killed in any case.

Umm, this is not some kind of isolated or even very interesting phenomenon... this kind of "denialist" talk is standard practice in all conflicts, probably going back to ancient history. The Japanese refuse to believe half of the stuff they did to the Chinese/Koreans and in the Balkans it's common as dirt to hear that atrocities were faked to get outside sympathy.

For most "deniers" it's antisemitism and refuting the Jewish controlled media et cetera. But beyond that I value truth and historical accuracy for their own sake, so if the Nazis only exterminated a mere 3 million, I hope that info would eventually supplant the current figures. Likewise, if the number was really 12 million.

The number was really 12 million - or possibly even 17 million depending on how you define it. 6 million jews, 6 million non jews (slavs, pows, communists, freemasons, gays, jehovahs witnesses, gypsies, cripples... )

It wouldn't surprise me actually if for every anti semite conspiracy theorist who thinks there was no holocaust, there's at least five who think the conspiracy was to after the war "big up" the jewish aspect of it while ignoring the rest.

I am rather skeptical that many of the "labelled" anti-semitic conspiaracy theorists are actually anti-semitic though, at least in a bigotted way. You can believe in a shadowy group of jewish people controlling things without believing most jews are in on it (likewise freemasons etc).

Oh and David Icke... I am morally certain when he says lizards, he means lizards.

I've always thought part of the point of remembering the past (e.g. the holocaust) is to prevent it from happening again. I think the world could pay a bit more attention to the genocides that are happening today to people of "undesirable" ethnicities and religions.

Side note: while I certainly don't minimize the impact of the Holocaust on the Jewish population, why do we so commonly see "six million" given as the death figure for the Holocaust as a whole, when that was the figure for Jewish victims, and there were about the same number of Gypsies, Poles, and other "undesirables" slaughtered who are mentioned much less often? Almost seems that the non-Jewish victims don't matter as much.

So, it's kind of crazy to say somebody's not antisemitic when he says that the Rothschild run Illuminati controls world banking, entertainment, and has set up Zionism and founded Israel to promote their evil attempts at world domination.

Somebody doesn't stop being antisemitic when he says, "Oh, I don't dislike ALL Jews. Just the Jewish secret masters of the world who are, by the way, also cannibal shapeshifting lizards."

Jon Ronson did a show on Icke years ago. Whereas I don't think they came out and said Icke was an anti-semite it seems that a huge amount of his audience, especially in North America, was down to the fact that people believed he was using the term lizard as a code word for Jews. It's been years since I saw it but it's here if anyone wants to have a look: http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...78405399014351

His show on Icke was, I believe, part of a series he had begun on political and religious extremists. One thing he found in common with these disparate groups of extremists is they all believed in a secret organisation that ruled the world, and usually Jews were in the mix there somewhere. It was after realising this he put these different threads together in a book called Them, which is an entertaining and illuminating read.

You do realize that Holocaust deniers are mostly people who hate Jews, right? There are probably a few who are just nutty conspiracy theory types, but most of them think the Nazis had the right idea.

There was at least one Nazi I ran onto in the Internet who did not deny the Holocaust and didn't exactly support it but acted as if it was a minor mistake of Hitler's, not probably the bloodiest programme of mass murder in history.

Side note: while I certainly don't minimize the impact of the Holocaust on the Jewish population, why do we so commonly see "six million" given as the death figure for the Holocaust as a whole, when that was the figure for Jewish victims, and there were about the same number of Gypsies, Poles, and other "undesirables" slaughtered who are mentioned much less often?

Sloppiness and a lack of paying attention in history class. But it's also true that Jewish groups have worked very hard to keep awareness of the Holocaust alive (since they feel their survival partly depends on it) and other groups have not had that kind of awareness, perhaps because they're more disparate and because they aren't seen as the Nazis' primary targets.

Sloppiness and a lack of paying attention in history class. But it's also true that Jewish groups have worked very hard to keep awareness of the Holocaust alive (since they feel their survival partly depends on it) and other groups have not had that kind of awareness, perhaps because they're more disparate and because they aren't seen as the Nazis' primary targets.

Also, for the Jews, the Holocaust wasn't just something that happened to people like you, it happened to your blood relatives. A disabled guy in Washington would likely be horrified at what was being done to disabled people in Berlin, but the disabled people in Berlin weren't his aunts, uncles, cousins, &c. (Obviously, this doesn't apply to the Romani.)

Too, there weren't many spokespeople for the other groups at the time. Gays were still being actively discriminated against in most of the rest of the world, and the disabled were largely ignored. Since the Jews were, by and large, the only ones talking about what had happened to them for several decades after the war, the narrative of the Holocaust as a crime against Jews became fixed in the public consciousness.